Two centuries ago, without congressional or public debate, a president who is thought of today as peaceable, Thomas Jefferson, launched America's first war on foreign soil, a war against terror. The enemy was Muslim; the war was waged unconventionally, with commandos, native troops, and encrypted intelligence, and launched from foreign bases.

The Pirate Coast: Thomas Jefferson, The First Marines, and the Secret Mission of 1805

After Tripoli declared war on the United States in 1801, Barbary pirates captured 300 U.S. sailors and marines. President Jefferson sent navy squadrons to the Mediterranean, but he also authorized a secret mission to overthrow the government of Tripoli. He chose an unlikely diplomat, William Eaton, to lead the mission, but before Eaton departed, Jefferson grew wary of the affair and withdrew his support.

Adios, America

Ann Coulter is back, more fearless than ever. In Adios, America she touches the third rail in American politics, attacking the immigration issue head-on and flying in the face of La Raza, the Democrats, a media determined to cover up immigrants' crimes, churches that get paid by the government for their "charity," and greedy Republican businessmen and campaign consultants - all of whom are profiting handsomely from mass immigration that's tearing the country apart.

Chancellorsville

A former editor of American Heritage, Stephen W. Sears has collected a wealth of new sources for this definitive portrait of one of the most dramatic battles of the Civil War. Using scores of letters and diaries written by soldiers from both Union and Confederate armies, Sears’ narrative history seeks to strip away the gloss of later commentary and restore the battle of Chancellorsville to its original voices.

The Pirate Hunter

Captain Kidd has gone down in history as America's most ruthless buccaneer. However, Captain William Kidd was no career cut-throat; he was a tough, successful New York sea captain who was hired to chase pirates. Across the oceans of the world, the pirate hunter, Kidd, pursued the pirate, Culliford. One man would hang in the harbor; the other would walk away with the treasure. The Pirate Hunter is both a masterpiece of historical detective work and a page-turner.

John Paul Jones: Sailor, Hero, Father of the American Navy

John Paul Jones is more than a great sea story. Jones is a character for the ages. John Adams called him the "most ambitious and intriguing officer in the American Navy." The renewed interest in the Founding Fathers reminds us of the great men who made this country, but John Paul Jones teaches us that it took fighters as well as thinkers, men driven by dreams of personal glory as well as high-minded principle to break free of the past and start a new world. Jones' spirit was classically American.

Bloody Spring: Forty Days That Sealed the Confederacy's Fate

In the spring of 1864, Robert E. Lee faced a new adversary: Lieutenant General Ulysses S. Grant. Named commander of all Union armies in March, Grant quickly went on the offensive against Lee in Virginia. On May 4th, Grant's army struck hard across the Rapidan River into north central Virginia, with Lee's army contesting every mile. They fought for 40 days until, finally, the Union army crossed the James River and began the siege of Petersburg. The campaign cost 90,000 men - the largest loss the war had seen.

The New Concise History of the Crusades: Critical Issues in World and International History

How have the crusades contributed to Islamist rage and terrorism today? Were the crusades the Christian equivalent of modern jihad? In this sweeping yet crisp history, Thomas F. Madden offers a brilliant and compelling narrative of the crusades and their contemporary relevance.

The War That Made America: A Short History of the French and Indian War

Apart from The Last of the Mohicans, most Americans know little of the French and Indian War, also known as the Seven Years' War, and yet it remains one of the most fascinating periods in our history. In January 2006, PBS will air The War That Made America, a four-part documentary about this epic conflict. Fred Anderson, the award-winning and critically acclaimed historian, has written the official tie-in to this exciting television event.

Polk: The Man Who Transformed the Presidency and America

This is a major political biography of a great American president - who won a war, transformed the government, and doubled the size of the United States...in four years. When Polk was sworn in as the 11th president, what followed was one of the most consequential presidencies in history.

1812: The Navy's War

At the outbreak of the War of 1812, America's prospects looked dismal. It was clear that the primary battlefield would be the open ocean but America's war fleet, only 20 ships strong, faced a practiced British navy of more than a thousand men-of-war. Still, through a combination of nautical deftness and sheer bravado, the American navy managed to take the fight to the British and turn the tide of the war.

To the Gates of Richmond: The Peninsula Campaign

It was the largest campaign ever attempted in the Civil War: the Peninsula campaign of 1862. General George McClellan planned to advance from Yorktown up the Virginia Peninsula and destroy the Rebel army in its own capital. But with Robert E. Lee delivering blows to the Union army, McClellan’s plan fell through at the gates of Richmond.

Pirates of Barbary: Corsairs, Conquests and Captivity in the Seventeenth-Century Mediterranean

It's easy to think of piracy as a romantic way of life long gone - if not for today's frightening headlines of robbery and kidnapping on the high seas. Pirates have existed since the invention of commerce itself, but they reached the zenith of their power during the 1600s,when the Mediterranean was the crossroads of the world and pirates were the scourge of Europe and the glory of Islam.

Empires of the Sea: The Contest for the Center of the World

Empires of the Sea tells the story of the 50-year world war between Islam and Christianity for the Mediterranean: one of the fiercest and most influential contests in European history. It traces events from the appearance on the world stage of Suleiman the Magnificent through "the years of devastation" when it seemed possible that Islam might master the whole sea, to the final brief flourishing of a united Christendom in 1571.

Landscape Turned Red: The Battle of Antietam

The Civil War battle waged on September 17, 1862, at Antietam Creek, Maryland, was one of the bloodiest in the nation's history: On this single day, the battle claimed nearly 23,000 casualties. In Landscape Turned Red, the renowned historian Stephen Sears draws on a remarkable cache of diaries, dispatches, and letters to recreate the vivid drama of Antietam as experienced not only by its leaders but also by its soldiers, both Union and Confederate.

God's Battalions: The Case for the Crusades

In God's Battalions, award-winning author Rodney Stark takes on the long-held view that the Crusades were the first round of European colonialism, conducted for land, loot, and converts by barbarian Christians who victimized the cultivated Muslims. To the contrary, Stark argues that the Crusades were the first military response to unwarranted Muslim terrorist aggression.

Fateful Lightning: A New History of the Civil War and Reconstruction

In Fateful Lightning, two-time Lincoln Prize-winning historian Allen C. Guelzo offers a marvelous portrait of the Civil War and its era, covering not only the major figures and epic battles, but also politics, religion, gender, race, diplomacy, and technology. He examines the strategy, the tactics, and the logistics of the Civil War and brings the most recent historical thinking to bear on emancipation, the presidency and the war powers, the blockade and international law, and the role of intellectuals, North and South.

A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War

By the time his body hung from the gallows for his crimes at Harper’s Ferry, abolitionists had made John Brown a "holy martyr" in the fight against Southern slave owners. But Northern hatred for Southerners had been long in the making. Northern rage was born of the conviction that New England, whose spokesmen and militia had begun the American Revolution, should have been the leader of the new nation. Instead, they had been displaced by Southern "slavocrats" like Thomas Jefferson. And Northern envy only exacerbated the South’s greatest fear: race war.

The Man Who Saved the Union: Ulysses Grant in War and Peace

Ulysses Grant rose from obscurity to discover he had a genius for battle, and he propelled the Union to victory in the Civil War. After Abraham Lincoln's assassination and the disastrous brief presidency of Andrew Johnson, America turned to Grant again to unite the country, this time as president. In Brands' sweeping, majestic full biography, Grant emerges as a heroic figure who was fearlessly on the side of right.

Six Days of War: June 1967 and the Making of the Modern Middle East

In Israel and the West, it is called the Six Day War. In the Arab world, it is known as the June War or, simply, as "the Setback". Never has a conflict so short, unforeseen, and largely unwanted by both sides so transformed the world. The Yom Kippur War, the war in Lebanon, the Camp David accords, the controversy over Jerusalem and Jewish settlements in the West Bank, the intifada, and the rise of Palestinian terror are all part of the outcome of those six days.

The Norman Conquest: The Battle of Hastings and the Fall of Anglo-Saxon England

An upstart French duke who sets out to conquer the most powerful and unified kingdom in Christendom. An invasion force on a scale not seen since the days of the Romans. One of the bloodiest and most decisive battles ever fought.

A Ship of the Line

Her Majesty's ship Sutherland is a humdrum ship of the line. But in command is none other than the heroic Captain Hornblower and, with his crew from the Lydia, he looks set to take on commando raids, hurricanes at sea, and Napoleons's gun batteries.

The Last Founding Father: James Monroe and a Nation's Call to Greatness

In this lively and compelling biography, Harlow Giles Unger reveals the dominant political figure of a generation. A fierce fighter in four critical Revolutionary War battles and a courageous survivor of Valley Forge and a near-fatal wound at the Battle of Trenton, James Monroe (1751 - 1831) went on to become America's first full-time politician, dedicating his life to securing America's national and international durability.

A Leap in the Dark: The Struggle to Create the American Republic

It was an age of fascinating leaders and difficult choices, of grand ideas eloquently expressed and of epic conflicts bitterly fought. Now comes a brilliant portrait of the American Revolution, one that is compelling in its prose, fascinating in its details, and provocative in its fresh interpretations.

Publisher's Summary

Two centuries ago, without congressional or public debate, a president who is thought of today as peaceable, Thomas Jefferson, launched America's first war on foreign soil, a war against terror. The enemy was Muslim; the war was waged unconventionally, with commandos, native troops, and encrypted intelligence, and launched from foreign bases.

For nearly 200 years, the Barbary pirates had haunted the Mediterranean, enslaving tens of thousands of Europeans and extorting millions of dollars from their countries in a mercenary holy war against Christendom. Sailing in sleek corsairs built for speed and plunder, the Barbary pirates attacked European and American merchant shipping with impunity, triumphing as much by terror as force of arms.

The author traces the events leading to Jefferson's belief that peace with the Barbary States and respect from Europe could be achieved only through the "medium of war".

Jefferson, long thought of, as a "pacifistic" president declared America's first war on foreign soil in response to "Islamic Jihad".

European nations had given in to buying off "peace" with the Barbary Coast states. Many of their citizens being subjugated to slavery and all of the attendant horrors. The Barbary Coast states (North African
states of Morocco, Tripolitania, Tunisia,Algeria) declared Islamic Jihad on America because Jefferson refused to pay the extortion fee.

This is an interesting bit of American/World History.The correlation with today's current events will not be missed by the listener. The narrator is excellent.

History, to many, is dull and dry, but not this reading. It takes a look at an often forgotten part of American History and brings it to life. The parallels to todays world are often uncanny. A great deal of background material is presented to flesh out the characters and their historical importance. After listening to the book I was left with that distinct feeling that our technology has changed in the last 200 years, however, as a nation, the actions and intents of elected officials has not.

"Jefferson's War" is concise reading of a story that more people need to know.

I am thrilled Audible offers it. The story talks about how Jefferson and his predecessors, and others in the Administrations, dealt with the Barbery pirates. Along the way, we learn the early history of The United States Marines, the namesake of Decatur, IL, the link between the battles and the National Anthem, and why the eagle in The Great Seal of the United States of America does need to hold both arrows and the olive branch.

Pirates and slavery were a historical problem in the Mediterranean for centuries prior to Jefferson's birth. Roger Crowley chronicled this in his book "Empires of the Sea". This plague on the people of the Mediterranean, and the World, was ended by Jefferson's Barbary War's. The ingenuity, courage, and daring of the American troops and their leaders changed the the path of history and secured support of the major European to end this blight.

The writing was interesting and the reading was good and at times powerful. This a book that should be read to gain a viewpoint of the attitude of many of the leaders and people Muslim world toward the "unbelievers" or infidels. A problem that we, or children and future generations will have to deal with.

I liked this book alot
it shows how the united states evolved from fledgling nation to powerfull nation.
the evolution of jefferson is great, after years of arguing against centralized government, he takes that power and creates a powerfull navy, in order to protect the fledgling american commerce.

after this book I took the plunge and picked up the 5part Alexander Hamilton monster of a book.

I find myself in between the other 4 reviewers. This is a very interesting story about a period of history I knew little about. But I did find that it droned on a bit - especially in the first half.
The parts of the story having to do with the ship Philadelphia and the taking of Tripoli were quite good. And the last chapter goes well beyond the Barbary war.

I would if they were interested in the subject. I would not if they just liked history as this book was very dry and fact filled.

If you’ve listened to books by Joseph Wheelan before, how does this one compare?

This was the first book I have ever read by him. I won't go out of my way to read his books but if the subject interests me, I will check it out.

What three words best describe Patrick Cullen’s performance?

Cultured, crisp and clear.

Could you see Jefferson's War being made into a movie or a TV series? Who should the stars be?

I could, but I would hope it would be more exciting than the book. Decatur played by Jake Gyllenhaal, Eaton by Dwayne Johnson. The Bashaw of Tripoli by Vin Diesel. Too many others to go on.

The most exciting part of the book was Eaton's journey across the desert into Tripoli so that the Americans could fight from land and sea. America had it's own Lawrence of Arabia.

Any additional comments?

I came to a different conclusion than the author on Jefferson's War. When Jefferson was President the war ended with the USA still paying "tribute" to the Beshaw. So why did we fight if the outcome was the same? After the War of 1812, the US finally had a Navy and Marine Corps that was ready to take on the Barbary Coast. When they fought in Madison's term the US told the Muslims they would no longer pay tribute to them. That was a win!This is the war that the Marine's Hymn states "By the Shores of Tripoli".

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